Research

Of the 27 specific reservations entered by the heads of Commission departments and executive agencies, six concern the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7). The programme, which runs from 2007-13, passed its halfway point last year and its first projects have been concluded. Audit samples suggest that the overall error rate is above the 2% level that is deemed acceptable.

In turn, that has prompted the head of the Research Executive Agency (REA), which manages large parts of FP7, and the heads of other Commission departments that manage FP7 programmes to enter reservations in their activity reports. (The departments in question are those for energy; mobility and transport; enterprise and industry; and information society and media.) The biggest potential impact was noted by the department for information society and media (up to €22.6 million) and the REA (up to €3.6m).

The departments that manage research grants are using a common audit strategy for these grants, which includes ‘data-mining’ – the use of information technology to discover patterns in large data sets – and close co-operation with the Commission’s anti-fraud office (OLAF).

The extent of the errors uncovered so far is worrying, suggesting deeply embedded flaws in the programme.

Some of the irregularities and errors are attributable to the complexity of the rules and paperwork on grants. The Commission expects that simplification measures that it adopted in January 2011 will help improve error rates, although it warns that these measures are as far as it can go within the legal parameters of the programme. The Commission has pledged to provide better feedback to those who received grants on the most common errors, to improve controls before payments are made and to carry out a sufficient number of audits to allow recovery of irregular payments. Nevertheless, the Commission expects the overall error rate over the entire FP7 cycle to be between 2% and 5%.